


Partners.

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Times, M/M, None - Freeform, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 04:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/793750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Love Story...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners.

**Author's Note:**

> This is complete, and stands alone, but there are two other stories to come. 

## Partners...

by Hope

Author's webpage: <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/1185/3/page2.html>

Author's disclaimer: She knows they don't belong to her, but she is so sweet to them when she takes them out to play, I doubt anyone minds. 

* * *

Partners... 

Jim moved silently in the dark, padding catlike down the stairs and across the expanse of floor that separated him from the man that lay innocently asleep behind the French doors. 

The doors were unlocked. They always were now. There had been a time, in the beginning, when the entrance to that room was barred. 

Not against him, not even against the unknown, but against the monsters which do not hide in closets. 

Against monsters that are all too real and all too scary. 

He paused outside the doors and gently caressed a handle. Blair would never know what those unlocked doors meant to him. 

Trust. 

They were an unspoken symbol of the younger man's faith in his Sentinel's ability to protect him from those monsters. 

Jim had put the doors up supposedly to give Blair some privacy but it was really to give him a greater sense of security. He wanted Blair to feel secure, to feel safe. 

To feel at home. 

Minutes slipped by unnoticed as he stood outside of Blair's room. The door opened easily under his hand. The tiny bit of light that cast dark shadows in the room was no challenge for his sight. He could easily see the curled figure on the bed, face soft with sleep, long curls spread like a halo around his head. 

Blair's face was turned toward him, dim light from the window casting patterns across his lax features. His breathing was deep and even, signifying the depth of his sleep. There were times when Jim had come into this room to wake the younger man from a nightmare's grip, to offer him comfort. 

Comfort. That's what brought him down the stairs and into this room. 

Not Blair's comfort, but his own. 

People are social creatures; not meant to be alone. Loneliness can be almost unbearable, crushing to heart, mind and spirit. 

There was something about being here, in this room while Blair slept that was a warm, soothing balm to the wound in his soul. 

He thought about it, alone in his room, following each one of his late night excursions. When had Blair become his sanity? His world? Everything? Every time he asked these questions of himself there was only one answer. Always. Blair had always been that and more for him. Everything before Blair had no meaning except as steps in the journey that brought the irrepressible Anthropologist into his life. 

His best friend. His partner. His Guide. His.... 

Jim eased closer to the still figure on the bed. 

At first that stillness had amazed him. How could anyone that seemed to stay in constant motion while awake be so tranquil in sleep? 

He knelt by the bed and traced a pattern of caresses in the air mere millimetres from the sleeping face, enjoying the warmth of Blair's body heat rising to meet his hand. Here, in the dark, in the middle of the night, nothing mattered but this. This man, and the ever strengthening bond between them. 

Sentinel and Guide. 

Bound together as surely as the sea was bound to the shore. This was his peace. This was what kept the darkness from overwhelming his soul. 

Only the peace was not perfect because he could not touch. It was the one thing he would not allow himself. Not here, not when the possibility of waking Blair was very real. Sometimes he really just _needed_ to touch him. Jim could never pinpoint the need or even control it. He knew that he touched the younger man a lot. More than was warranted or necessary, but not as much as he wanted. He did not permit himself the more intimate touches he craved - not even the ones he could pass off as innocent. 

He was afraid. Afraid that if he started he would never stop. 

His hands itched to sink themselves into the long dark curls that circled Blair's head like a nimbus The problem, or the problem as his rational mind perceived it, was that his need to touch the young man was not always innocent. There was a definite sexual connotation to many of his thoughts. Jim dreamed about running his hands over Blair's body, through the crisp hair on his chest and revelling in the shivers of anticipation that would follow. 

It was always anticipation in the dreams; never fear, his ultimate horror or revulsion, his personal hell. 

This need, this craving to touch was a physical ache within him. Sometimes it hurt so much it was all he could do not to moan with the pain. Blair would smile at him and the longing would crash through him like a storm. 

* * *

Blair swam slowly toward consciousness. And felt something, something that was not quite a touch pass over his head and down along his arm. "Jim", a name whispered in a dream. 

Jim's name came to him on a sleepy sigh. He froze. Blair was awake. Shit. When he finally dared to look, the younger man's eyes were on him, straining in the dark, sleepy and uncomprehending. 

Jim felt his heart stop, then stutter and begin to pound quickly. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. 

"Hey, Jim." Blair smiled sweetly up at the other man, his face soft with sleep. 

"Sorry, Chief. Didn't mean to wake you up." 

"Jim?" It was spoken more clearly this time and the Sentinel shuddered, feeling like he was standing on the edge of a precipice. 

Blair's eyes locked with his for an endless moment and then he lifted the blanket, scooting over and exposing a small but welcome expanse of body-warmed bed. Jim stared for a moment, not understanding and then he was up and in, pulling the covers around the both of them. 

Blair turned to face the other way, pulled Jim's arm across him, snuggled back into the bigger man's chest and immediately drifted back to sleep. 

Jim lay still, barely daring to breathe for several long minutes, then his arm tightened around the Blair and he slept, his nose buried in the long curls that caressed his face, neck and chest. 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 

To be continued in ...in life....  
and finished in ...and in all things. 


End file.
